Beauty contest
An all-American Oscar
by Peter Keough
An earnest film about life, death, and duty set during World
War II goes up against a comedy about hopeless love,
social constraints, and the redeeming power of art. A grudge match brews
between DreamWorks and Miramax for the coveted gold statuette. Saving
Private Ryan versus Shakespeare in Love? The battle between
Miramax's The Cider House Rules and DreamWorks' American Beauty
looks like a reprise of last year's contest, and though the outcome will be
similar, a different studio will be rewarded.
Cider House's chances went sour a couple of weeks ago when American
Beauty swept both the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Sam Mendes, the first-time director of Beauty, led an undistinguished
pack of nominees to win the DG prize; SAG named Kevin Spacey Best Actor and
Annette Bening Best Actress and gave Beauty's cast the Best Ensemble
Award. Since 1949, the Directors Guild's choice has been Oscar's on all but
four occasions; and in its five-year history every one of SAG's Best Actors and
Actresses has taken home the Oscar statuette as well. So Beauty's
chances of winning big on Sunday night look rosy.
For a while, it did seem that Cider House might rule. The Miramax
machine tried its best, and indeed that may be the problem: after a decade of
domination by the pushy pseudo-independent studio, perhaps Hollywood has
decided to start off the new millennium fresh. As for Cider's political
agenda, if the presidential candidates aren't showing much interest in the
death penalty, racism, homophobia, abortion, corporate corruption, or dead
people, why should the Motion Picture Academy?
Peter picks
Best Film: American Beauty
Best Director: Sam Mendes
Best Actor: Kevin Spacey
Best Actress: Annette Bening
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine
Best Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie
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In terms of Hollywood's internal politics, Beauty makes sense. Last year
saw yet another resurgence in independent filmmaking, and Hollywood responded
to 1999's fresh ideas with its usual half-hearted conciliation: the Academy
snubbed more subversive films like Three Kings, Being John
Malkovich, and The Limey while embracing the safer Beauty.
Although ultimately conventional, Beauty feels original, and Hollywood
likes the way the film indulges deviance just enough to provoke a
vicarious thrill and then punishes it, restoring a chastened status quo. So I
see American Beauty winning Best Picture, with Mendes as Best Director,
despite his being a British tyro who, it's reported, had to rely heavily on his
cinematographer. A director of greater stature might have won for Cider
House, but Lasse Hallström is no Steven Spielberg.
Best Actor is complicated by the Hurricane factor. The Academy would no
doubt like to belie its lily-white image by rewarding Denzel Washington for his
muscular performance as wrongly convicted boxer Rubin Carter. But the absence
of any other major nomination for Hurricane bespeaks Hollywood's concern
over the film's shaky facts and (relatively) radical politics. A pumped-up
Kevin Spacey is a less threatening figure, and the opponents he's up against --
a despiriting job, an emasculating wife -- are less controversial.
The Best Actress favorite also faces a contender with political baggage.
Hollywood loves it when girls will be boys -- just look how well Gwyneth did in
Shakespeare in Love. So why not Hilary Swank as a young woman who poses
as a man in Boys Don't Cry? For one thing, this is a true story, and the
sordid brutality of Brandon Teena's fate is far less glamorous than the
artistic apotheosis of Paltrow's character. And unlike Paltrow's muse, who
takes on male trappings but submits to male genius, Swank's rebel seeks the
power as well as the appearance of men. A safer choice is Bening's termagant in
Beauty, who exceeds her role as housewife by pursuing a career and
committing adultery and is appropriately punished.
When it comes to Best Supporting Oscars, nothing is clear-cut -- even SAG
predicts these winners less than half the time. This year, though, I think the
guild might be on target. SAG winner Angelina Jolie, with her charismatic
performance as a bad girl who is ultimately punished in Girl,
Interrupted, should beat out Samantha Morton's mute doormat in Sweet and
Lowdown, Catherine Keener's unredeemed bitch in Being John
Malkovich, Toni Collette's beleaguered mom in The Sixth Sense, and
Chloë Sevigny's bewildered teenager in love in Boys Don't Cry.
And SAG winner Michael Caine as the ether-addicted abortionist in The Cider
House Rules will allow the Academy to cast its timid pro-choice vote.
Michael Clarke Duncan's black idiot saint in The Green Mile would be a
candidate for a racial consolation prize except that the role makes Hattie
MacDaniel's Mammy from Gone with the Wind look visionary. Jude Law
hasn't a prayer from The Talented Mr. Ripley, despite displaying his
assets in the bathtub scene. And Tom Cruise's "Respect the cock!" tirade from
Magnolia should serve him as well as his "Penis!" diatribe from Born
on the Fourth of July did.
Caine's toughest competition would seem to be young Haley Joel Osment for
The Sixth Sense. The Academy might give Osment the Oscar just to keep
him from bursting into tears the way he did when he lost the Golden Globe. Or
voters could be worrying that, when Osment looks out at an Academy that yet
again has denied its best and brightest, the dead people he sees might be
themselves.
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